‘THEY WEREN’T GIVEN RESPECT’
Friends of four men who died in crash decry lack of charges against driver
A day after an Ulster County grand jury cleared the driver in the August 2015 one- car crash that killed four young men, friends of those who died gathered Thursday at the spot on Dock Street in the village where the vehicle ended up on its roof.
“You wait to hear something. You’re patient and leave it in the hands of the system, and it failed us,” said Khaalid Alexander, 25, of Kingston.
“If one of them were driving, he’d be in jail,” Alexander said, a reference to the four passengers who died being black. The driver, Meredith McSpirit, is white.
“They weren’t given respect by the justice system, and we come to pay our respects,” Alexander said, adding that he and other friends of the four young
men visit the makeshift memorial on Dock Street frequently.
On Wednesday, in a statement emailed to the media, Ulster County District Attorney Holley Carnright said the grand jury, which looked specifically at whether McSpirit, 20, “was impaired” at the time of the accident, found no evidence she committed a crime.
Alexander and B. J. Williams, 22, of Kingston, agreed with Saugerties Police Chief Joseph Sinagra, who said Wednesday that the grand jury’s decision was a “severe miscarriage of justice” and “nonsensical.” On Wednesday, Sinagra said McSpirit at least should have faced traffic-related charges.
McSpirit, of Kingston, was driving a 2002 fourdoor Honda Accord at about 11:35 a.m. last Aug. 26 when the car went down a 110-foot embankment in the village of Saugerties and landed on its roof. McSpirit missed
the sharp right-hand curve at the end of Washington Avenue, onto Montgomery Street, and instead went down a driveway, crossing a private road and crashing down the rocky embankment. The car hit a house on Dock Street before coming to rest upside-down.
“When this was still smelling of blood, we were here. I wiped all my friends’ blood off that house with my bare hands,” Alexander said.
The four passengers in the car — Adam Jeffrey McQueen, 22, of Ulster Park, and Kingston residents Dante Crump, 22, Kaireem Meeks Jr., 24, and Jonte Clark, 26 — all died. McSpirit suffered serious spinal injuries. The five were coming from HITS on the Hudson in Saugerties, where they all worked.
McSpirit told the Freeman last week that she has no recollection of the accident and the moments leading up to it, and she denied the allegation in a lawsuit against her that she was “impaired by alcohol, narcotic drug and/or controlled substance” at the time.
The memorial on Dock Street is filled with basketballs, candles, footballs, photos of the men with their partners and children and a Kingston High School team jersey. A Teddy bear, yellow and red silk f lowers and bottles of beer and other alcohol also have been placed among rocks on which friends have written tributes to the four.
Last week, McSpirit provided the Freeman with the results of blood tests taken shortly after the accident that showed no alcohol in her system, and Carnright, in his emailed statement, said the grand jury “found that no ... evidence of impairment exists.”
McSpirit did not return a Freeman reporter’s message on Thursday.
In Wednesday’s press release, Carnright said the grand jury, “after hearing evidence for several days from numerous witnesses, determined not to file criminal charges relating to this incident.”
Saugerties police on Thursday released to the media hundreds of pages of documents and inter-
view transcripts related to the accident, as well as audio recordings, but said in a cover letter to the Freeman that “three other documents are in the final stages of completion and will be available for release shortly; these documents being the accident report, incident report,and detective’s supplemental report.”
The district attorney did not say what might have led to the accident, but he implied that excessive speed was not to blame.
“Our investigation included an accident reconstruction, analysis of the speed of operation of the vehicle and an examination of the vehicle itself for mechanical defects,” he said, without revealing the results of those efforts.
McSpirit said last week that the car was having brake problems, which she became aware of the day before the crash. She said McQueen borrowed $150 from a supervisor at HITS and was planning to fix the problem. McSpirit said, though, that “nothing [about the brakes] felt awkward or not normal.”
Among the documents released Thursday was a list of the contents of McQueen’s pants pockets, including seven $20 bills.
Alexander said Thursday that he saw McQueen the night before the crash and that McQueen did not mention any problem with the brakes on the Honda. If there had been a problem, he said, “he wouldn’t have gone to his boss. He would have gone to one of us.”
On Wednesday, Sinagra said experts reviewed the car’s brakes and found there were no problems. He also said investigators determined there was no attempt by the driver to stop the car prior to the crash.
Carnright said the investigation included “interviews of individuals who had contact with or worked with McSpirit that morning, video of the operation of the vehicle prior to the crash, statements made by Ms. McSpirit to both medical personnel and law enforcement and laboratory analysis of her blood.” He did not identify the source of the video evidence, although McSpirit has said a
Snapchat video taken in the car is still available online.
A lawsuit against McSpirit was filed Jan. 28 by Crump’s mother, Christine Snyder. Besides McSpirit, the suit names Adam Jeffrey McQueen Sr., the father of victim Adam Jeffrey McQueen; and Mary P. Fisher, who is identified as the owner of the car.
Another lawsuit, was f iled on Nov. 10, 2015, against the village of Saugerties by the McQueen estate, according to documents released Thursday.
For their part, Williams and Alexander said their lives have been changed forever.
Standing in front of the memorial to his friends, Williams remembered Meeks, in particular, with whom he shared the astrological sign Aries.
“This year, it was our plan to go somewhere,” he said. “... To lose four friends in one tragic accident will hit home forever.”
Alexander added, “We don’t want anyone to feel like we’re angry. We just want everybody to see that their lives mattered.”